Failure To Attract

So I’m sitting at my favorite hangout place here in Austin, TX - an amazing hookah bar on the Drag in Austin. For those of you not in the know, the Drag is this strip of Guadalupe down right next to the UT campus. It apparently hasn’t changed much in the past few decades, and I’m very glad for that. It gives this great laid back feeling, something that seems to be pretty uniquely Austin. They have live music almost every night, if not every night. And most musicians in Austin are fantastic.

My favorite band has no name yet, just their names - Clayton, Mike, and Steve. I put that in bold, because they’re just that good. I’m listening to them now, actually, sans Mike, he’s working tonight apparently.

I guess I should give some information about the hookah, so I’m just going to copy the information listed in Wikipedia:

Hookah (Hindi: हुक्का, Urdu: حقہ hukka) or shisha (Arabic: شيشة‎, Hebrew: נרגילה, Nargilah‎) or (Turkish: nargile) is a single or multi-stemmed (often glass-based) water pipe device for smoking. Originating in India,^[1] it has gained popularity, especially in the Arab World. It had gained popularity under the reign of the Ottoman Sultans. A hookah operates by water filtration and indirect heat. It can be used for smoking herbal fruits. More information here. It’s a great, relaxing, social thing that can give a natural - and legal - high. Nothing like any illicit substances, just a great feeling. Highly enjoyable.

I’ll be posting a video of this place, as well as a few fun pictures, within the next few days, when I get my phone fixed.

-David

Well, maybe using “disaster” isn’t quite the word I’m looking for.

For the most part, the weekend went fantastically! I believe everyone who attended got all that they needed out of it, thankfully, and it seems like all was well. All in all, we enjoyed ourselves!

The one thing that took some of the shine out of the weekend, though, happened on Saturday night. I had run into town to pick up some swim trunks and a FlipVideo camera for this wonderful woman, Jennifer Mauro, and upon arrival to the Best Buy to retrieve said FlipVideo… a man pulls into a parking spot close to mine, and starts yelling at me about how I cut him off in the car on the way to the store. I apologized profusely to this livid man, not remembering actually doing it or not, and he slowly got back into his car.

You can always tell when someone is pissed off at you, with facial features, body language, and then that stupid posturing, attempt to intimidate thing that most men will do when they lock eyes with you, never blink, and try to get you to back down.  It’s a primal dominance thing.

In any case, after apologizing, I went inside for 10 minutes or so to get the camera, and when I came outside - the tire closest to him, the front right one - was hissing and mostly empty.

Basically… he slashed one of my tires.

At the time, it didn’t really piss me off that much, as it was mainly just an inconvenience.  I called the cops to file a police report, and changed the tire.  It wasn’t until I saw the time that I got upset - the hotel closes the pool at 10:00 PM, and it was 9:45.

It all ended up being alright though, as it’s just another one of those life events that keep things interesting.  Though, as the old Chinese curse goes…

“May you live in interesting times.”

I thought I’d try to see how well the integrated video embedding tool - to see if the other embedding options via plugins and such do a better job at it or not. I’ll be plugging in a youtube video, as well as an mp3 of the song. Here’s to hoping!

The video:

Justice - DVNO

The mp3:

Justice - DVNO

Viola!

EDIT: Hmm. Apparently it doesn’t quite embed it like I suspected… at least my awesome YouTube plugin for WordPress works perfectly. …I hope.

[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e_XzCR2MbrU]

Yep, it does!

-David

So, I’m now typing from the newly installed version of WordPress - an amazing blogging platform.  This new update includes an incredible suite of options that kinda just blows my mind.  I’ve been realizing more and more often how powerful WordPress really is, and I think I’m going to be adding a new service to my repertoire, for installing and configuring WordPress for a multitude of other things beyond blogs.

Did you know that WordPress actually allows you to use it as a simple platform to create well designed looking websites, with an amazing control panel for ease of use.

As part of the new features, it includes a way to automatically embed YouTube (or any other video website) videos, as well as pictures, music, or just about any other type of media.  It also includes basic SEO techniques, such as tags, a permalink with the ability to make sure that the title of your post is included in the permalink, making sure that it indexes with search engines properly.  This is not a new feature, but it now includes the ability to edit what the permalink should be, so you can SEO it even more.

These are just a few of the amazing features included in the new version - without even mentioning the slick interface.

I think I’ll charge $200 for installation and configuration, as well as some support to help you figure out how to even use it to it’s fullest extent.

Interested?  Email Me.

So I was sitting around at my parent’s place and someone linked me to this video:

[youtube:http://www.collegehumor.com/video:1764274]

I was amazed! This is a wonderful use for a Tesla coil, in my humble opinion.